The H-Word The Peripeteia of Hegemony

A fascinating history of the political theory of hegemony

Few terms are so widely used in the literature of international relations and political science, with so little agreement about their exact meaning, as hegemony.

In the first full historical study of its fortunes as a concept, Perry Anderson traces its emergence in Ancient Greece and its rediscovery during the upheavals of 1848–1849 in Germany. He then follows its checkered career in revolutionary Russia, fascist Italy, Cold War America, Gaullist France, Thatcher’s Britain, post-colonial India, feudal Japan, Maoist China, eventually arriving at the world of Merkel and May, Bush and Obama.

The result is a surprising and fascinating expedition into global intellectual history, ending with reflections on the contemporary political landscape.

Perry Anderson is the author of, among other books, American Foreign Policy and Its Thinkers, The Indian Ideology, The New Old World, Spectrum, Lineages of the Absolutist State, Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism, Considerations on Western Marxism, English Questions and The Origins of Postmodernity. He teaches History at UCLA and is on the editorial board of New Left Review.